IIT-Madras develops AI-powered drones for rescue operations

In December 2015, when fishermen took their boats on to flood ravaged streets of Chennai to rescue those stranded, the city police deployed a drone fitted with a camera in several inaccessible neighbourhoods and rescued more than 200 people after images captured by the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) were processed in a control room. Now, a team from Centre for Innovation, Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT-M), has designed and developed a 3D printed drone that can fly, automatically detect human being and recognize indviduals in need of immediate medical care in a disaster affected site before it sends the location details to the ground station in real time for rescue operations. For this, the team has equipped the drone, its components including cameras and the ground station servers with artificial intelligence (AI), deep learning and computer vision skills.

While the drone is powered by artificial intelligence, the camera is programmed with face and activity recognition software to quickly identify people injured, stranded or covered in debris, and waiting to be rescued. “The lack of resources and the time required to scan all locations after any disaster are limitations faced by rescue teams deployed by the armed forces or local authorities. We are trying to address these issues with artificial intelligence and computer vision,” said Pranav Pawar, who was initially part of the team. According to the team members, the camera attached to the drone, a hexacopter, is programmed with an algorithm that can detect people and send the GPS location along with images and videos of the spot to the ground station. The camera can identify the existence of people in a location from a maximum height of about 30m. “Ground level object detection can also be done to confirm that people are actually there by manoeuvring the drone lower,” Pawar said. As the camera detects, it sends the images or videos to a processor in the drone to process the data before it is transmitted to the ground station along with location details. The members said that besides face recognition, the cameras are also programmed with activity recognition system to identify people who need to be rescued first and given immediate medical care. “This way, we can prioritize the rescue mission,” the team said. While the drone is 3D printed at the IIT-M lab, components like camera, processor and gimbal — used to stabilize the camera during drone movement — are bought and attached. “We are now optimizing the drone with obstacle avoidance system to make it autonomous,” they said. Ayush Maniar, another team member, said he is now representing the team at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, US, after winning the Codefundo++ National Challenge, organized by Microsoft India that encouraged students to developed AI-powered drones.

“We also demonstrated the drone in the technology seminar conducted by the Indian Army in January this year. We hope to soon demonstrate our technology with the NDRF,” he said. Prof K Senthil Kumar of department of aerospace engineering from Madras Institute of Technology, Chennai, who has developed drones which are now being used by the Tamil Nadu police, said, “Drones being used now by police for surveillance are not equipped with cameras using activity and face recognition technology, but implementing such technology in the field may, however, be challenging.”